For decades, information concerning enroute events, most commonly traffic congestion, has been provided by radio station announcements to drivers as well as other listeners in the broadcast vicinity. The traffic information consisted primarily of events that could impact drivers, such as traffic congestion and accidents. Typically, the event location, such as road name and intersection, would be included so that those driving or considering driving along the affected road would be informed and have the option of changing their driving plans. The radio station would receive information about traffic jams and accidents, from traffic reporting helicopters that overfly the roads, and recently, also from reports by drivers themselves who observe traffic events first-hand and report same to the radio station via cell phone. With the advent of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation and smartphone technology, the available traffic information has become more accurate, useful and varied.
One proposed methodology for utilizing these new technologies includes an in-vehicle device which determines both the location of the vehicle and the road on which the vehicle is located. Such device also receives road-specific event information from a centralized service. The in-vehicle device then filters the road-specific information and determines the relevance of the information for the driver based on current vehicle road location and/or vicinity. What a driver receives, however, includes event information which would not necessarily be relevant or useful to that driver. This would be the case where a driver's planned driving route veers off to another road prior to where the event was reported to be located on the current road. As a result, information about this event would not only be meaningless but potentially misleading and confusing to certain drivers.
Another proposed methodology provides a means for reporting an event based upon the GPS position of the reporting mobile units. Event information (i.e. locations and descriptions) is transmitted from the mobile units to a centralized system. The centralized system stores said event information and makes such information available to vehicle drivers through various forms of textual and graphic displays, including event placement on electronic road maps. This methodology requires each driver to examine the location of the event on a map, as well as examine the subject matter, in conjunction with the knowledge of the planned route to determine if the event is located along each driver's actual route, and thus whether or not the information is relevant and useful.
Yet another proposed methodology allows users to create a highway driving trip plan that includes enroute events and activities by accessing a proprietary database of stored events and activity sites that are located along specified routes. Those items can be displayed in electronic map format. The user can personalize the trip plan by having only preferred items displayed and can cause those items to be rearranged and resequenced for presentation in a desired order. The user can enhance the information by assigning visiting times to each selected item, so that an entire itinerary can be created. However, the user must select the events and site information from a database during creation of the trip route; while the user is driving on the trip there is no capability to acquire, let alone notify drivers of short-term events that occur spontaneously ahead along specific routes.
Still another proposed methodology allows users to create trip plans including map displays by accessing a centralized system. These trip plan maps, with user-created event location icons and symbols, can be shared with other users. Thus, all users are able to create highway trip plans and make use of event and activity information provided by other users that are located along a specified route. However, each user must discern from the information received, whether the event is on a particular user's intended route path and whether the event is of an activity that is of particular interest.
While all the above described methodologies may provide helpful assistance to travelers, each suffers from various deficiencies. For example, none of the proposed methodologies is capable of consistently providing relevant and useful information to a driver in a timely and efficient manner.
Accordingly, it is an objective of the present Invention to provide improvements beyond those found in the previously proposed methodologies. It is yet another object of the present Invention to provide an improved technique for notifying travelers of transitory events along their travel path. It is still another object of the present Invention to provide an improved technique which facilitates the consistent delivery of relevant and useful information to a driver in a timely and efficient manner.
It is another objective of the present Invention to provide an improved methodology for alerting travelers to transitory events that are located ahead along the planned travel route.
It is yet another objective of the present Invention to provide an improved technique to inform travelers of events that are not only located directly on the travel route, but events located in the proximity of the route that might be of interest but would require the motorist to drive off the planned travel route to reach them.
It is further objective of the present Invention to provide an improved methodology to allow a traveler to specify preferred events of interest located ahead on the planned route and to allow the traveler to provide on- and off-route driving time parameters.